Human error has been cited as a primary cause or contributing factor in disasters and accidents in many and diverse industries and fields. For example, traffic accidents involving vehicles are often attributed to human error and are one of the leading causes of injury and death in many developed countries. Similarly, it was found that distraction (e.g., mental distraction) of a worker affects performance at work and is one of the causes of workplace accidents.
Therefore, monitoring human operators, such as workers or drivers of vehicles, is an important component of accident analysis and prevention.
Safety systems have been introduced into vehicles by several car companies. Safety systems typically monitor the driver's steering, acceleration, braking and use of other controls and detect when that behavior begins to change because of fatigue, at which time the system sounds an alert and triggers a warning message in the vehicle's instrument panel.
Some safety systems use an infrared camera positioned on the vehicle's steering column. Additionally, video based event detection systems have been suggested for use in monitoring elderly or other populations at risk, however these systems don't usually enable monitoring to prevent an event in advance but rather sound an alarm only once an event is detected.